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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

The Humanity on Earth, is moving and progressing towards a vast and complete Transformation, towards the Next Step in the Evolution on earth, towards the emergence of a New Race on earth. Mankind is proceeding towards the New Summit of Coneciousness and Existence. And in this March onward, we are all being led by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother [Mirra Alfassa], whether we are conscious or not. And it is unfortunate that the majority is in ignorance!

According to Sri Aurobindo, Man is a transitional being, who will have to be transformed, collectively, towards the formation of a New Race. Sri Aurobindo's appearance among the Mankind is one of the biggest events that has taken place in the history of the Earth.

The Mother came to Pondicherry on 29 March 1914 and met SriAurobindo for the first time. On the next day, She wrote :

"Gradually the horizon becomes distinct, the path grows clear, and we move towards a greater and greater certitude. It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth ; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth. O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hopes have no bounds. My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent."—Prayers and Meditations : The Mother.

Thereafter, The Mother joined Sri Aurobindo and organized Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry.

These words from her, on her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo, are self-explanatory. The existence of Sri Aurobindo gives rise to the boundless hope that, one day, the Divine reign shall be on earth and that darkness shall be transformed into light. Sri Aurobindo is the Hope of Man, in spite of the fact that multitudes of human beings are plunged in the densest darkness and ignorance. Prayers of millions of human beings through millennia have been answered by the Supreme in the form of Sri Aurobindo

OOOOO

Sri Aurobindo has said :Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity – for that is the meaning of the manifestation…. It is the omnipresent cosmic Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it does not in the least diminish the cosmic Presence and the cosmic action in the three or thirty million universes. The Descending Power (Avatar) chooses its own place, body, time for the manifestation. The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. [Letters on Yoga — Sri Aurobindo]

OOOOO

O thou who climbest to man from the dull stone, Face now the miracle summits still unwon.[ Evolution : Sri Aurobindo ]

Thus said Sri Aurobindo to us, to the beings who have maneuvered and become the humans through the long and prolonged difficult course of Evolution — from the stone to the human. That was the story of the Creation of Man.

And now we will have to face and conquer the new summits beyond Man, beyond human being and the human consciousness. We shall have to conquer the new heights of Consciousness and have the miraculous capacities to transform ourselves for the New Creation, for the Advent of the New Man, the Superman, the Supramental Being.

We shall have to ascend the heights of the higher ranges of Mind — of the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind , the Overmind — the ascend the heights of the Gnosis, the Supramental Consciousness. And before all these Ascents to be made, we shall to have to discover and know the truth in us, the Psychic Being.

That is the Task before us. For, that is the Truth. The Spirit, involved in the Stone that has become Man, has to evolve further and manifest Itself.

The Mother has prayed before the Supreme :

Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal.

This Evolution is the Work of the Divine, the Supreme. The Supreme, the Existence Consciousness Bliss has become the Stone, the principle of Matter through Involution. And thence the return March of the Supreme — from Matter to the Supreme Consciousness again. And Man has come into being in course of Evolution in the return March.

But in Evolution, the One willed to become the Many.

"It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said that He thought : "Ekoham, bahu syama." [ I am alone, and shall become many.] When the Existence-Consciousness became many, countless many, and each of the many is a Soul.

OOOOO

The Divine began His return March and has reached the stage of the Human. Now the Human has to collaborate with the Divine to manifest the Divine in Many as the Supramental Race.

Ignorance and Darkness and diseases and Death have to conquered, as those belong to the falsehood. That is the Will of the Divine.

The Mother had prayed :

The hour has come when a choice has to be made, radical and definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory….

As ordinary human beings, we are leading ourselves to the Abyss, through our lowest emotions, passions, pre-occupations and occupations, through our fears and distrust and gross indulgence. Often we close our eyes to the Light, often we shut up our inner windows when we hear the Call. We lend ourselves to be controlled and managed by the Asura.

The Mother has further said:

The Asura is the force of falsehood, antidivine, which reigns as sovereign over the physical world; his influence is felt everywhere, it is in everything in Matter. But the time has now come when the separation, the purification, can be made, the falsehood, the Asuric influence, rejected and there can be an exclusive living in the Divine Truth.

OOOOO

On the 1st January 1967, The Mother gave us the warning :

Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss.

The Mother further said:The message is only for those who are still asleep and quite satisfied with their sleep.

We find that still the majority of the humankind is asleep, asleep in darkness and ignorance with all satisfaction.

The Truth is that we shall have to aspire and endeavour for the Ascent, we shall have to prepare ourselves and be ready for the Next Step, we shall have to stop remaining satisfied with our present state of being immersed in gross indulgence and inner blindness and blocked consciousness, of being involved with hatred and jealousy and greed and violence, of being conquered by darkness and ignorance and death.

If we accept the Truth, we are opening the gates of great possibilities. The Mother says : This wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates for our call, to come down upon earth…

We shall have to accept this Truth. Otherwise the Abyss is sure. To stop remaining the grossly animal man, immersed in darkness and narrowness and hatred and violence, that is what is desired. Our pre-occupation and occupation should be The New Summit, the New Evolution.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

30. I saw a child wallowing in the dirt and the same child cleaned by his mother and resplendent, but each time I trembled before his utter purity.

[Thoughts and Aphorisms : Sri Aurobindo]

Whether the child is wallowing in dirt or he is cleansed by his mother, the Seer in Sri Aurobindo trembled to see the utterness of his inner purity.

The human child is not conquered by the Ego; neither is the consciousness of the child touched by the grossness of the animal hunger and lust and anger, nor has he (or she) the egoism and narrow selfishness and the mental preparations, distortions and twists, with numerous limits and limitations of the ordinary mind that the grown-up common man has. The Mother has said that the purity that we observe in the child is the purity of the instinct. Mind has not started its play and evolution in him as yet.

The Mother says:

For the purity of which Sri Aurobindo speaks here is the purity of instinct, that obeys Nature's impulses spontaneously, never calculating, never questioning, never asking whether it is good or bad, whether what one does is right or wrong, whether it is a virtue or a sin, whether the outcome will be favourable or unfavourable.[Works Of The Mother, Volume-10]

However, in the present circumstances of the "civilized" humanity, as the child grows, the mental ego in him grows, and also grows in him his selfishness, his calculations and the sense of profit and self-interest. This is because the Mind grows in him and the elderly ones so train and teach him directly and through their own examples. As the child grows, his parents and teachers, as they are now, mostly, train him to grow with the ego and with the mental preparations and distortions and limitations.

The Mother says:

In modern "civilised" life, parents and teachers, by their practical and rational "good advice", lose no time in covering up this spontaneity which they call unconsciousness, and substituting for it a very small, very narrow, limited mental ego, withdrawn into itself, crammed with notions of misbehaviour and sin and punishment or of personal interest, calculation and profit; all of which has the inevitable result of increasing vital desires through repression, fear or self-justification. [Works Of The Mother, Volume-10]

But the emergence and the manifestation of the Mind in the innocent human child is unavoidable. The evolutionary way is that Mind must grow and evolve. Foe, after the evolution of Mind, Man has to transcend and go beyond Mind and proceed towards the Supramental Becoming and Manifestation. After the evolution of Mind, the further evolution beyond Mind can take place — for, that is the Aim and the purpose of Evolution.

As the human child shall have to grow and participate in the Future advancement and progress, he shall have to pass through the play and growth of the Mental, breaking his innocence and purity, so that he can march ahead towards the Superconscious purity and innocence of the Supramental Future.

In order to enable the child to grow ahead towards this Supreme Goal of the Supramental Becoming and Manifestation, the child needs Education, as it should be.

The Mother has said:

The education of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his life.

[Works Of The Mother, Volume-12, Education]

It is important to add what The Mother has further said:

Indeed, if we want this education to have its maximum result, it should begin even before birth; in this case it is the mother herself who proceeds with this education by means of a twofold action: first, upon herself for her own improvement, and secondly, upon the child whom she is forming physically.

[Works Of The Mother, Volume-12, Education]

It may be added here that according to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, education, to be complete and integral, must have the five principal aspects: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. [The details may be discussed later in the proper context.]

A complete and successful education alone can lead a man properly on the Path of the Next Evolution , from the inborn purity of the child to the super-conscious purity of the Supramental. It is the demand of the Evolution, backed and supported by the Divine Will, that the human being must grow beyond Mind and evolve as the Supramental Being — which is the Goal, the Task before Man.

Sri Aurobindo has given the Call to each of us:

O Thou who climbedst to mind from the dull stone,

Turn to the mirac1ed summits yet unwon.

[Evolution: Collected Poems: Sri Aurobindo.]

This Task of evolving towards becoming the Supramental Being may seem to be impossible to us. But Sri Aurobindo has also said to us about the Call of the Impossible.

Monday, June 13, 2011

29. I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue; I can only see God, His play in the world and His will in humanity.

[Thoughts and Aphorisms : Sri Aurobindo]

When one has so advanced in Yoga that he only sees God, he is no more in the Ego, and surely he has become one with the Divine — he has realized the Oneness with the Divine. And then, virtue and vice has no meaning for him any more. The Divine Will is then the only worthy and meaningful indication for him.

A question may arise that, if God's Will is everything, why then there is the personal will, the human will and what is its use.

The Mother has answered it, saying that everything in the Universe and especially on earth is according to a Divine Plan. Everything here is an execution of the Divine Will, and Nature is a part, an aspect of It. And the personal will, the human will, is a part of Nature, a means of Nature's action. The Mother has said: "So, personal will is in a way part of God's Will."

We should understand properly what "will" is. The human will is a thought, supported by a 'force' for execution and also supported by an 'impulse'. Often, it is supported by a lesser knowledge and/or understanding, lesser force and lesser and baser impulses and instincts. We find on earth and among humans clash of wills. Whenever the thought and the force and the impulse backing the will is limited, more or less, conditioned by unconsciousness or half-consciousness, by grossness, by lack of enlightenment, there comes the question of clash or the question of virtue and vice.

"The Divine Will is omniscient and omnipotent, it is irresistible and immediate in its execution' — The Mother says.

Whenever the human will is in accordance with the will of Nature, it is then fulfilled or executed, sooner or later, depending on the prevailing conditions and circumstances. It is also possible that the human will, the personal will is in accordance with, or even directly one with, the Divine Will. It may be so by the Grace of the Divine or by a Yogic advancement or ascension. Through a proper use of the personal will, one may ascend or go back to the Divine, rising from the half-consciousness, from the animal consciousness. The Will is the Way to the Divine Realization, as it is in accordance with the Divine Will.

As long as the Ego is there, untouched by the Grace or by the Yogic realizations, darkness prevails. But within us, within each of us, the Divine Child is there, and we shall proceed ahead, now or later, towards the greater Truth beyond Ego, beyond half-consciousness, beyond inconscience and ignorance.

Sri Aurobindo has given us the Hope that we can ascend and progress to the Divine Existence.

Our struggling ego cannot change the course….For He who is grows manifest in the yearsAnd the slow Godhead shut within the cellClimbs from plasm to immortality.[Sri Aurobindo: Savitri: Bk II, Co XI, pp272]

Sri Aurobindo thus assures us that our journey is an ascension, a progress "from plasm to immortality."

Barindranath Chaki

Interested mainly in the Adventure of Consciousness, I believe in human progress and evolution and in the inner capacity of Man to outgrow and master all his imperfections and darkness, to grow into a creative and constructive divine being, along with the society, conquering all inner and outer darkness, crossing all barriers and divisions.
I am a retired Officer of the Orissa Administrative Service from Orissa, India. Since adolescence, I was inspired by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (Mira Alfassa) and sought to understand and follow Their Teaching, and make others understand and follow Them. In 1956, I read The Life Divine, and gradually, read almost all that is written by Them and about Them. I have visited the Ashram and Auroville some times. I organized some Sri Aurobindo centres in Orissa, and often met Prapatti and Ramkrishna Das. I and my wife and children had a special Darshan of The Mother on my birthday on 3rd March 1972.
Mira Aditi Centre has published my Bengali translations of some books including Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness by Satprem, India's Rebirth and India the Mother, collections from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.